Monday Morning Autograph - Albert Belle

 

Today's Autograph: 1999 SP Signature Albert Belle 

Why Do I Own This Card?

Albert was a pretty incredible player. His career was too short for him to make the Hall, or so it would seem, but he was a scary hitter. I remember him getting 50 home runs and 50 doubles in a season when I was in high school, I followed along that summer with the box scores. Been a fan every since. Sure, Albert had his faults, but he could absolute hit a baseball. I have other cool Albert Belle cards, there might be a bonus at the end of the post.  

P.S. - Remember that time he got hit by a pitch, but he didn't want the free base?

Back of The Card

Haiku About Albert Belle Running Over Fernando Vina with Video 

Ground ball to Vina

Albert Belle Runs Him Over 

Let's Get Some Water 

 

Bonus Card:

Around The Card Room, Take 16

I typically do not collect items from fast food restaurants, but I made an exception in 2002 when the St. Louis area McDonald's started selling Cardinals bobbleheads. Sadly, I do not remember many of the details surrounding these, nor could I find them online. I do not know how much the cost or when during the season they were released, but I have always liked them and these are an item that has a connection to my kids.  

Here is what I do remember.  The set was comprised of J.D. Drew, Albert Pujols, Fernando Vina, and Jim Edmonds.  A new bobblehead was sold each week at McDonald's and the base and autographed baseball were sold during the last week. I think. 

"I will take a J.D. Drew and an orange soda"

Here is the back of the bobbleheads, which are made from hard plastic and are not ceramic.  

Beyond housing all of my baseball cards and memorabilia, the card room is also a second floor family room for my kids. They have spent countless hours playing in the room and also use the television to watch movies. Playing usually means making sure they do not knock over piles of baseball cards, nor touch any of the things hanging on the wall. 

However, my daughter in particular has always been a huge fan of action figures and took an early interest in the bobbleheads that are in the card room. Since most are ceramic they are less than ideal action figures for the average toddler. However, the plastic Cardinals bobbleheads were a part of her play schemes for years, making them one of the few pieces of baseball memorabilia that I allowed to double as a play toy for my kids.  

Here are J.D. Drew and Jim Edmonds at the vintage Little Tikes Doll House.  

J.D. Drew enjoying snack time. 

She has moved onto American Girl Dolls and other toys, so I have reclaimed my McDonald's Cardinals bobblehead set and placed them back on a shelf in the card room.  They held up really well through years of toddler use.  

Hardly a scratch.  

Back home in their spot on a shelf of bobbleheads.  

Archives Hits

A pair of posts coming up the next few days on the new Topps Archives product.  I have really enjoyed this product in recent years.  It's a great place to see some of the old Topps designs again on cardboard and it's also a chance to get some really cool autographs.  While I think that Topps can be really repetitive with their player selection on autographs, but the Archives product offers lots of new and different names.  There are a few Hall of Fame autographs sprinkled in the product, but the majority of the signatures come from some really good players who are not quite Hall of Fame players.  

With my first post on the product I am going to go ahead and look at the hits and inserts that I pulled out of my two boxes.  Let's start out with a really common insert in these boxes.....

I really like the look of these cards which are a copy of the 1968 Topps Playing Cards.  If you have never seen the originals they are pretty common and not too expensive.  It seems that these are about 3-4 per box.  Good looking cards.  

The most talked about insert cards in this year's Archives set is the Will Ferrell insert cards.  The actor/comedian appeared in a whole bunch of spring training games this year by hopping from game to game all on the same day.  The non-autographed cards have been selling for a few bucks each while the autographed versions of these cards (/10) have been selling for crazy amounts.  

That small print reads $1,999.95.  I am a little short on this card, or I am sleeping on the porch.  

I also picked up two colored parallels.  These are both silver and numbered out of /199.  The David Wright card is nice.  Fernando Rodney?  Sure.  Is he still shooting an arrow at the end of games?

Let's do a couple of more.  Still got to show off my best card and some autographs.  

Not sure how I feel about the inclusion of the Topps Original cards in the Archives product.  Topps has been putting these in their base set these last couple of years.  Not sure that putting them into more sets is cool.  Maybe it would be cooler if Topps would put some better names into the product.  Brent Strom?  Not excited.  

One more non-autograph to share, but I am going to wait to share that one....Let's do some autographs.   

This was my favorite autograph.  Vina was a nice player for the Cardinals in the early 2000s and helped lead the team to the playoffs several times.  Without looking I am going to guess that the Cardinals years were the high point of his career.  His signature has changed a little bit over the years, but it is still a nice autograph.  

Nice Bordick.  I am pretty sure that this is going to find a new home with a local collector.  

Franco is great card.  I would love to see this card with a Reds photo, but I can live with the Mets.  It's on card and the guy had a great career.  

and then there is this one.  I have become pretty cynical about Topps ever coming up with redemption cards.  Further, I am not sure I am a big fan of Yasmany Tomas though either.  

#MyCardMonday

I have not been posting anything on my #MyCardMonday posts outside of some random card out of a box in my collection.  Where's the story behind the card?  Where's the love?  I have learned the errors of my ways and decided to post a little bit of a story to go along with my card this week.  Last Monday I posted a Placido Polanco card, so this week I am going to stick with Cardinals from the early 2000s and go with a cool Fernando Vina card.

For those not familiar with Fernando, he played primarily for the Brewers and Cardinals during the mid 90s into the early 2000s.  He was a spark plug offensively.  Not much power, not much speed, but he found a way to get on base.  He finished in the Top 10 for getting Hit By Pitches eight times during his career and is 19th in the overall career leaders for Major League Baseball.  In fact he ranks second all-time in Cardinals history and fourth all-time in Brewers history at being struck by pitches. What kind of player's offensive game revolves around getting hit by pitches all of the time?  He was like a poor man's Craig Biggio.  

Fernando was also a pretty good fielder, but sometimes bad stuff happened to him in the field.  Probably his most memorable moment in his career involved getting absolutely trucked by Albert Belle.  #Trucked 

Beyond the Albert Belle thing, Fernando landed in the Mitchell Report and worked for awhile at ESPN.  Was it the Mitchell Report?  I'm not sure what Fernando is up to these days, but I keep waiting for him to turn up in another video with Murphy Lee, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, and Puff Daddy.....

30 Year Top 50: 2001 Topps Heritage

#2- The 2001 Topps Heritage set is an absolute masterpiece on cardboard.  While, it's not my number one set on my countdown I had a long debate about putting this set up one more notch from where it sits at #2.  The concept of the Topps Heritage set is simple: start with the 1952 Topps card design and issue a set of modern cards following the design, photography, and overall set up of the set.

1952 Topps Johnny Lipon

Topps would end up resizing the cards from their 1952 size to fit the mold of the 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 modern card size.  The rest of the set would follow the 1952 set to a tee.  Both sets were 407 cards which included short prints in the first eighty cards of the set and the high numbered cards at the end of the set.  The first eighty cards in both sets were also printed in both black and red blacks.  While most cards in both sets featured red backs, the variation on the backs gave collectors something extra to track down.  

2001 Topps Heritage Andres Galarraga 

In my opinion, Topps did a fabulous job of recreating the 1952 cards onto a modern piece of cardboard.     One of my favorite features on the 1952 Topps cards are the pictures.  I am not sure how to create that effect with a photograph, but 50 years later many of the cards in the 2001 Topps Heritage set could fit in with the 1952 Topps set.  Really, before this set was issued Topps did not do enough as a company to highlight it's history within the industry.  While they can be annoying with the history thing at times now, they had not worn it out when they released this set.  The Andres Galarraga card above is a low numbered short-print with the black back.  The low numbered short prints are not as short-printed as the high short prints, but they can be a little bit tricky to track down.  

2001 Topps Heritage Edgar Renteria 

The cards in the middle of the set are referred to as the "commons" of the set.  They obviously are not very difficult to find on the secondary market and can be found in large lots often if you are looking to complete the set.  While they are not as valuable or as rare as the rest of the set, I still love looking through the commons just to look at the cards.  Most of the Cardinals cards in the 2001 set are in the "commons" group which lessens does lessen the monetary value of the set, but it is one of my favorite Cardinals team sets that I own.  Will Clark and Eric Davis in a Cardinals uniform is cool, but I also like some of the horizontal cards like this Edgar Renteria.  

2001 Topps Heritage Jeff Conine

The high number cards in the set tend to be the tougher finds and were seeded at a rate of 1:2 packs, or 12 per box.  In other words, it took several boxes of Topps Heritage to assemble a complete run of high print cards.  However, the boxes for this set did not stick around very long and collectors were generally forced to trade or buy their way to complete this set.  Some of the high numbers are common players, some are mediocre, and there are several stars which are difficult to find.  What makes a great set?  This Jeff Conine card was the last short print I needed to finish this set off several years ago.  I found a copy of the card on Ebay, watched it, and at the last minute tried to buy it.  I ended up spending almost $10 on a Jeff Conine card.  The high number short-prints in this set still sell at premiums and several of the cards have dried up.  

2001 Topps Heritage Cal Ripken

In my opinion, there are three tough high numbered cards: Cal Ripken, Mike Piazza, and Manny Ramirez.  Those three cards rarely sell for less than $10, but can push $20 if you are trying to use an auction site and the bidding gets competitive.  However, I think most people that have assembled this set have run into a card or two that was surprisingly difficult to track down, or cost a little bit more than they had anticipated.  

2001 Topps Heritage Fernando Vina Autograph 

The Topps Heritage set also featured a strong set of inserts that the Topps has generally run throughout the Topps Heritage line over the past decade.  One of the most exciting parts of the Topps Heritage release every year is the autograph list.  There are usually some really good signatures in the sets and the cards certainly carry a premium over some of Topps other autograph issues.  I actually originally owned two of these autographs, but decided to downgrade a bit after cashing out for $1,100.  Currently, I own a Fernando Vina autograph from this set.  I know it does not really seem impressive, but the autographs in this set truly carry a premium.  Most Fernando Vina autographs sell for less than $5.  This Fernando Vina autograph rarely sells for less than $30-$40.  In fact, I thought about looking for a Sean Burroughs autograph after he played for the Durham Bulls a few years ago, but after fidning that the cheapest copy was $50, I decided I really did not need one.  Imagine what good players sell for, if you can even find them.

Overall, an outstanding set and worth your time to pick up a few for your collection.  This set is an excellent challenge for the persistent and the completed set is awesome to look through.  In my opinion, the best product that Topps has put out during my time collecting baseball cards.